


First

by wheel_pen



Series: Agent and Doctor [1]
Category: The Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 20:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3302831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Rachel Ward’s first patient on her first day of the job is Agent Jeremy Green—who immediately points a gun at her, demanding she prove her identity. After that, there’s nowhere to go but up—or so she thinks until Jeremy becomes more interested in her personal life than she’s comfortable with, and receives some brutal discipline for not remaining calm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First

Rachel Ward had had extensive training before being allowed to work on the project, of course. But she was still just a physician— _that_ was the skill she’d been brought on for, and she wasn’t sure she could stuff much more about covert operations and behavior modifications into her head without pushing out something else important, like basic first aid. She’d only had a few hours to study this particular agent’s profile and medical records, for example, and the list of past injuries made her head spin. Besides which, she didn’t know anything about his _new_ injuries, only that he was still mobile. Which, given the extent of his previous injuries, didn’t actually mean much.

She swiped her ID three times on the way to the clinic, as well as providing a fingerprint and a voice code. Finally she was able to open the door to the exam room, hoping her patient hadn’t bled out while she was following protocols.

He hadn’t. He sat alertly on the edge of the table, his clothes rumpled and torn, scrapes and bruises coloring his face. It was, she thought, a pleasantly nondescript face—handsome enough to inspire a certain amount of goodwill, without actually attracting attention in a crowd. Most of the agents looked that way; she figured it wasn’t coincidence.

His eyes narrowed in a calculating way when he saw her. “Hello, Jeremy,” Rachel said cheerfully as the door shut behind her. “I’m Dr. Ward.”

He blinked rapidly a few times. “Where’s Dr. Lopez?” he asked.

She didn’t take it personally. “He was transferred. I’m taking his patients now.” No response. “Well, what seems to be the—“

In an instant he slipped from the table to his feet, one arm outstretched, pointing a gun directly at her, and she froze. “Challenge: Duluth,” he demanded.

All she could think about were vague warnings she’d been given—black ops, lethal force, experimental training, psychological quirks. The look in his eyes above the gun—slightly hunted, like an animal confronting a predator in its own lair—did not calm her.

“Challenge: Duluth!” he repeated more forcefully.

Weren’t people monitoring them? Wasn’t someone going to break down the door any second to deal with this?

“Duluth,” he said again, eyes burning into hers. “Duluth!”

“Um, uh, er—“ Her mind went blank. She was supposed to memorize a dozen new code words every week. Which she _had_ , but—“Um, response—response: chipmunk!”

He blinked at her. “Repeat.”

“Chipmunk?” she said again, lamely, knowing it wasn’t right.

He considered a moment longer, then dropped his arm to his side, relaxing. “Good morning, Dr. Ward,” he added, belatedly greeting her.

She stared at him, dismayed by the sudden change even as she felt a bit safer. “You believe me?” she asked in astonishment.

“An enemy agent would be better prepared,” he told her matter-of-factly.

She rolled her eyes, fear morphing into irritation. “Very funny,” she snapped. “Put the gun down. Over there! Take the bullets out.” She wasn’t taking any more chances.

He moved to set the gun where she’d indicated, ejecting the ammunition cartridge with one hand. There was something odd about the way he held his other arm stiffly at his side, though. “What’s wrong with your arm?” Rachel asked, still flustered.

“It’s broken,” Jeremy replied flatly, as though describing a paper cut.

This immediately snapped Rachel back into doctor mode. A broken arm she knew how to deal with. “Alright, let’s take your jacket and shirt off,” she instructed, snapping on a pair of gloves. The jacket mostly hid the bloodstains that had seeped through the shirt, though the injuries underneath them had healed over already. “When did you get these?” Rachel asked curiously.

“Twenty-two hours ago,” Jeremy answered promptly, and Rachel raised an eyebrow at him; he failed to find anything unusual about the statement. She would’ve guessed the injuries were three or four days old at least.

Gently she began to probe his arm. He watched with mild interest but no other expression. “Does this hurt?” she finally had to ask.

“Yes.”

“You can tell me when it hurts,” Rachel pointed out. “You don’t have to be all tough guy here. I’m not going to tell anyone you winced.” He cocked his head slightly and looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language. Rachel sighed. “I _need_ you to tell me where it hurts so I can diagnose the break,” she explained.

“Ow,” he answered readily, though with little emotion. “That hurts, too.” She pressed at another spot and he said nothing. “Dr. Lopez always put me in the full body scanner right away,” he offered suddenly.

Rachel decided to take the comment as a sign he was warming up to her, critical though it might be. “Hey, who’s the doctor here?” she joked with mock exasperation.

“You are. Ow,” Jeremy answered obediently.

“Then we’re gonna do it _my_ way,” she concluded. “Do you have any other major injuries?”

“Define major,” he requested and she shook her head.

“Lie down,” she ordered, assisting him. She could see why Dr. Lopez had found the body scanner more informative.

“So what was that whole password thing about?” she wanted to know, as she continued looking him over.

“Identity check,” he explained. “I wasn’t informed you had taken Dr. Lopez’s place.”

“Just a little prank on the new guy, huh?” Rachel said lightly, though she had a feeling he’d been dead serious.

“Are you a guy?” he asked instead, with some confusion.

She rolled her eyes again. “Don’t mock your doctor, buddy,” she advised him. “I’m in a position to dole out some pretty good painkillers here.”

That seemed to shut him up for a while and she was able to attend to his injuries; he seemed to almost zone out and she wondered if that was part of his pain management system. If so she didn’t want to disturb it.

When she approached his face with a small flashlight, however, his hand shot up from the table and grabbed hers, his fingers encircling her wrist in a grip that was delicate and painless, yet rendered her completely immobile. “My eyes are sensitive to light,” he warned.

“I know,” she agreed reassuringly. “But I need to make sure you don’t have any retinal damage.” After a moment he seemed to find the argument worthy and let her hand go. “Just look right at the tip of my left ear,” she told him. “I just need to take a quick look… Looks okay,” she decided, pulling back. “Okay, sit up and I’ll wrap up your arm.”

His eyes had watered from the light and he wiped the moisture away with, she imagined, slight peevishness. “The CIA code of conduct doesn’t allow for transgendered employees to display their non-biological preferred gender at work,” he informed her.

For a moment Rachel didn’t know what he was talking about, then she remembered his earlier confused comment. “Guess I should’ve gone to work for the FBI instead, huh?” she cracked. There was no reaction beyond a slight frown—this guy really knew how to kill a joke. “I’m female,” she finally said, giving the statement in a put-upon tone. “Don’t ask me to prove it to you, though.”

He nodded. “You smell female.”

“That’s my goal,” Rachel replied dryly. Then it suddenly hit her. “Chesapeake! Challenge: Duluth, response: Chesapeake.”

“Yes,” Jeremy agreed.

Something in his tone made her defensive. “Well, chipmunk was _close_.”

“Not really.” She scoffed. “You displayed physical symptoms of genuine terror,” he went on, as though she’d asked for further information. “Increased heart rate and perspiration, pupil dilation, muscular tension—“

“Yeah, I remember,” she interrupted, still embarrassed. “Patients don’t usually point a gun at me.”

“Sorry,” he said after a moment, and it sounded genuine but also foreign, like he said it so rarely he wasn’t sure if it was appropriate or not. Followed by, “That was a J. Edgar Hoover joke.”

“Yeah, that was ten minutes ago,” Rachel claimed, relaxing slightly.

“It was five-point-two.”

“Are you a _Star Trek_ fan?” she teased, finishing up. “There’s something very Vulcan about you.”

“Pop culture isn’t my strong suit,” he admitted, though frankly she was impressed he’d even made _that_ connection.

She decided not to poke any further. “Okay, all done here,” she announced. “You’re supposed to go to your room and rest for a while before, er, secondary debriefing,” she read from her protocol. He nodded and hopped off the table. “You wanna put some clothes on first?” she suggested, indicating the fresh set of scrubs on the table. His original clothing had been too damaged to keep. “If you don’t have clothes, where are you gonna put your gun?” she asked lightly, helping him dress. He opened his mouth. “Stop, I don’t wanna know,” she interrupted. He shut his mouth. “Okay, there you go,” Rachel said. “Come back and see me tomorrow.”

“Yes, Dr. Ward,” he agreed, although his movements within the Center were so restricted that he had little choice one way or another. Then he collected his gun and bullets, and left. He did give a slight glance back over his shoulder. Rachel left the exam room to be cleaned by her nurse and headed for her office to write some notes for her report, before her next patient arrived.

**

Jeremy was sitting on the exam table again when she opened the door. He gave her a curious glance that made her feel assessed, measured, and evaluated all in a moment, though not in the lewd meat-market way she’d sometimes gotten in the past. She had a feeling she still wouldn’t rank high in the qualities he found important, though.

She kept the door open. “Good morning, Jeremy,” she greeted, a bit warily. The way his eyes narrowed slightly by way of response didn’t reassure her. “Do you remember me from yesterday?”

He blinked thoughtfully, then slid off the table and approached her slowly. He seemed like he was trying not to startle her, but really it just gave Rachel more time to get nervous. “Jeremy,” she warned, backing up. If she got out into the outer office, the nurse would probably call for the guards and then they’d cart Jeremy away, to who knew what kind of discipline; she really didn’t get an aggressive vibe from him. But when her back hit the wall with no clear view to the nurse’s desk, she began to rethink this opinion.

Jeremy stopped only a few inches away, well within her personal space. Then he took the cup of coffee from her hand and backed away with it. “You—just wanted my coffee?” Rachel sputtered. “You’re not supposed to have caffeine,” she remembered from his file.

He set the cup down on a side table, then strode back up to Rachel, even closer than before, and sniffed her. “You’re the same person from yesterday,” he decided.

“Nice to know,” Rachel replied, flustered, and pushed him back with a hand on his chest. “Go sit on the exam table.” He did so immediately and she decided it was safe to shut the door. “Never a dull moment,” she muttered to herself, opening his file again.

“The coffee scent interfered with the identification,” Jeremy offered, while she tried to get her head back in the game.

“Well next time use your words and explain what you’re doing,” she advised peevishly. “Alright, take your shirt off. How does your arm feel?” The qualitative question was beyond him. “On a scale of one to ten,” Rachel began, and Jeremy nodded readily, “with one being no pain and ten being the worst pain you’ve ever felt, how does your arm feel?”

This, he understood. “Two-point-seven-five-six—“ He broke off when he saw her expression. “You wanted me to use whole numbers,” he deduced.

“Well let’s not go beyond _two_ decimal places,” Rachel allowed.

“Two-point-seven-six,” he rounded.

“You’re taking your pain meds as prescribed?” she checked.

“Yes.”

“Every six hours, with food or milk?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t really surprised; following instructions was what they were good at.

“Any headaches, nausea, dizziness, difficulty sleeping or swallowing?”

“Yes, no, no, yes, no,” he replied promptly.

“Headaches and difficulty sleeping,” Rachel translated after a moment. He seemed much more interested in watching her sip her coffee as she leafed through his file again. “I guess those are common side effects of being in the program, huh?” His gaze skittered away, toward the blank wall, and she had the distinct impression he was uncomfortable. “Have they increased in frequency or severity lately?”

“No.”

She examined several of the cuts and scrapes he’d been sporting yesterday. The smaller ones had almost vanished already. “These have healed well,” she noted, unable to keep the amazement from her tone even though she knew to expect this. He sniffed her again as she examined a laceration on his shoulder, but she decided to tactfully ignore it. “Does anything hurt worse than your arm?”

“No.”

“Does anything hurt today that didn’t yesterday?”

“No.”

“You’re not lying to me so you can get out of here and go back to having fun, are you?” she asked, mock-serious.

As she expected the question perplexed him, but he looked like he was trying to answer it. Then the light dawned, subtly. “You’re telling a joke,” he surmised.

“Guilty as charged,” Rachel agreed. “But you shouldn’t lie to me if something’s bothering you, pal,” she added more seriously. “Even if I don’t ask you about it specifically.”

He gave this some thought for a long moment, and Rachel waited patiently, not even wanting to guess what was going through his mind. She thought he was going to say something once; then it was discarded. “Nothing’s bothering me,” he decided, finally.

“Okay, I guess you can go then,” she allowed, and he slid off the table. “Be back tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.”

This time he understood it was a joke right away, even if he didn’t get it. “Your joke rate is lower today than yesterday,” he observed.

“You’re catching me pre-coffee,” Rachel quipped.

He nodded as though this made perfect sense. “Good-bye, Dr. Ward.”

**

Rachel thought of herself as punctual, but when she saw Jeremy perched on the edge of the exam table when she opened the door, giving her a look she imagined was reproving, she couldn’t help but wonder if they were operating according to different clocks. “Good morning, Jeremy.” She was not carrying any coffee today.

“Hello, Dr. Ward.”

She glanced at him as she set his file down. “Such trust,” she teased. “No good morning sniff even?”

“You’ve already had your coffee today,” Jeremy deduced. With someone else it would have been meant humorously; for him it was just an observation.

“I’m going to check your arm today,” Rachel announced, beginning to unwrap it. “How does it feel?”

“One-point-five-eight,” Jeremy replied promptly.

“Almost no pain, huh?” she surmised. “That’s good. Though I suspect you have a higher pain tolerance than, say, _I_ do.”

“Yes,” he agreed readily. “But I also have the ability to make accurate internal assessments.”

Rachel probed his arm carefully and Jeremy watched with interest but said nothing. Finally she poked him with her fingernail. “Ow,” he responded in confusion.

“Just checking to make sure you’d say it,” she assured him. She moved to her desk to write a note. “I’ll leave it unwrapped. Tomorrow, go down to X-ray and have a picture taken, and we’ll see how it looks.” She didn’t want to bombard him with too many harmful substances, given what hazards he was already exposed to normally.

“The X-ray department is two floors _up_ ,” Jeremy corrected.

She rolled her eyes slightly but otherwise ignored this. “But just because it feels better, I don’t want you putting stress on it,” she instructed firmly. “No push-ups or boxing.” Mild consternation flashed across his face. “You haven’t already been doing that, have you?” she accused.

“With the other arm, only,” he replied quickly.

“I guess that’s okay,” she allowed. “Let’s see how the other injuries are doing.” Predictably, but still astonishingly, they were healing rapidly—she would’ve thought a week had gone by instead of a day. “So you’re already back to exercising, huh?” she asked conversationally. It didn’t seem to be doing him any harm. “What else do you do all day?”

“Sleep, talk to doctors and analysts, eat, shower—“

“No need to list every bodily function,” Rachel interrupted, predicting where his mind would go. “You like to read?”

“Mission research,” he replied, tracking her movements closely. “I am not currently researching a mission.”

“Right, you’re supposed to relax and recuperate from the _last_ mission first,” she agreed. “So what do you do to relax?” She felt this question fell under her medical purview, though the staff psychiatrist might disagree.

Jeremy looked at her quizzically. “Exercise, sleep, eat, shower—“ he repeated.

“You left out talking to doctors and analysts,” Rachel pointed out.

“That’s not relaxing,” he told her honestly, and she had to grin.

“Okay, last thing,” Rachel promised, pulling her penlight from her pocket. She saw him grimace. “Sorry, I know you don’t like it, but I need to check your eyes.”

He caught her hand as it raised to his face. “Evidence suggests they’re fine,” he tried to argue mildly.

“I’ll be the judge of that, buster,” she countered, and he released her hand. He stayed silent while she shown the light into his eyes. “Looks fine,” she agreed a moment later, switching the light off. “Just wanted to make sure.”

He swiped at the tears that had formed with, she felt, irritation. “Do you live with your sister and a cat?” he asked out of nowhere.

Rachel froze and the penlight dropped from her hand. Despite still being half-blind Jeremy managed to catch it within inches, but his reflexes failed to impress Rachel. She was too busy thinking, with sudden panic, about how he could know that. Could he leave the Center? Had he followed her home? Was her family now in danger, and what kind of job had she taken—

“Dr. Ward?” he prompted when she didn’t answer.

“How did you know that?” she asked, throat tight.

Jeremy frowned slightly at her reaction. “Scent,” he answered readily. “You have another woman’s scent on you, but not strong enough to be sharing a bed. You’re wearing her shirt.”

Rachel took the penlight away from him and backed up a little, mildly calmed by the logical answer. “Actually it’s _my_ shirt, she just keeps ‘borrowing’ it. Anyway, how do you know we’re sisters and not just roommates?”

“Similar scents.”

Rachel turned away, scribbling some notes and trying to act more casual than she felt; she could imagine him behind her, reading her body language with confusion, not understanding why she’d suddenly become upset. At least, that was what her instinct told her, and not that he _enjoyed_ her discomfort. He didn’t mean anything threatening by it, she told herself, he was just curious about her—but now he _knew_ , and he was no harmless eccentric. He was a dangerous man who did dangerous things. Just two days earlier he’d pointed a gun at her.

“I suppose you could smell the cat, too,” Rachel finally said, going for light exasperation. The cat scent was certainly strong to _her_ whenever she walked into her sister’s apartment—more incentive to find her own place soon.

“Yes, and you have cat hairs on your clothes,” Jeremy pointed out.

“What?!” Rachel made a noise of _true_ exasperation, trying to pluck off the hairs he pointed to. “I lintrolled myself _twice_ this morning, and I’ve _asked_ her not to let the cat into my room—“

“It’s a female cat,” Jeremy informed her. He still seemed troubled by her reaction. “She could become aggressive when she goes into heat.”

“Well fortunately she’s fixed—“ Jeremy shook his head at her, frowning.

Rachel decided not to argue the point. “Okay, so, don’t stress your arm, and tomorrow you can have it X-rayed,” she reiterated, trying to get them back on track. “Everything else looks good. You can go,” she added when he didn’t move.

Finally he slid off the table and walked out the door, giving her a long backwards glance. She made sure he was gone, then fled to her office.

**

Rachel headed towards the exam room with mixed feelings. After considerable thought she felt she’d been a little silly yesterday, overreacted to Jeremy’s observations about her living situation—which, annoyingly, had turned out to be more accurate than she’d imagined. He was, even after just three days, the patient she enjoyed seeing the most, the only one who displayed much in the way of personality or curiosity about her, and she didn’t want to spoil that rapport with paranoia, despite how common that feeling seemed to be around here.

But he was still dangerous, and it was foolish to forget that. He might be temporarily caged, but he was still a tiger—that was his purpose, to be unleashed on the world and get something done that no one else could do. She couldn’t let her guard down too much, for her own safety.

Then she opened to door and saw him slumped on the exam table, new bruises marring his face and a look in his eyes that was positively ashamed.

“Jeremy! What happened?” Rachel demanded, examining the fresh injuries. They looked several days old, so she presumed they were from later yesterday.

“Are you upset with me?” he wanted to know. His lip had been split and partially healed, and was now swollen.

“Well, I’m upset that you got hurt again, before you’d healed properly,” she tried to explain, helping him take off his shirt. He looked, more or less, like he’d gotten into a bar fight and hadn’t made a very good showing. “How’s your arm?” She probed it lightly.

“Ow,” Jeremy told her. “Two-point-one-four.” Slightly _more_ painful than yesterday.

“Well, I want to know what happened,” Rachel insisted. She’d thought they were careful about keeping the agents apart from one another, precisely to prevent violent confrontations. “Report, buster,” she ordered when he hesitated.

“I went to Dr. Zhu’s office for my appointment after I left here yesterday,” he finally explained. She was one of the psychiatrists on staff. “The conversation didn’t go well.”

“What happened to Dr. Zhu?” Rachel asked, not sure she wanted to know.

“Nothing. But I couldn’t remain calm,” Jeremy went on. He was trying to remain detached from the memory but it was obviously difficult for him. “Dr. Zhu had to call in the guards.”

“Is that how you got beat up?” He indicated yes. “Well—how many guards _were_ there, tough guy?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood. “Couldn’t you take them?”

His gaze drifted towards a corner of the ceiling. “I’m supposed to remain calm here,” he reminded her. “At the Center.” There was a faraway look in his eyes now, as if he were resigned to starting over again in his training.

“Even when someone’s kicking your a-s?” Rachel was half-kidding, but also half-serious. There was a lot of damage on him for someone who hadn’t fought back.

He nodded slowly. “They wouldn’t have been called if I’d remained calm.” He seemed convinced that it was entirely his own fault.

Rachel felt suddenly sick, and she sat down on the edge of the table beside him, close enough to touch. The training here was ‘experimental,’ the methods ‘unorthodox,’ the routines ‘unusual’ and whatever other vagaries they’d given her when the job was explained. She’d never been in the military proper but had grown up on bases around the world and thought she was used to the ways that people had to be broken down before they could be built back up stronger than before.

But maybe she wasn’t.

“You were upset with me yesterday,” Jeremy said suddenly. “When I mentioned your sister and the cat.”

She’d almost forgotten. “Oh, more like startled,” she tried to tell him. “I didn’t realize you had such a powerful sniffer! No more breakfast burritos for _me_.”

He turned to give her his usual perplexed look and she hoped that meant he was feeling better. “And, you were right about the stupid cat!” she went on. “Went into heat, hissing and peeing everywhere. The animal shelter people swore she’d been fixed. Look.” She held out her hand for him to see a long, shallow scratch on it.

“Did you disinfect that?” he wanted to know. “Cat claws can carry a variety of pathogens—You knew that,” he deduced from her look.

Rachel stood back up. “Alright, lie down and let’s check out the new injuries,” she instructed. As an afterthought, she pulled the heat lamp over and positioned it above his healing arm. “Does that bother you?”

“No,” he said, in a tone she interpreted to mean he actually enjoyed it.

“Well let me know if it does.” She thought most of the injuries looked superficial but it was better to be thorough. “So how do you know so much about cats?” she asked him. “Did you have one as a kid?”

“Threat assessment,” he countered. She supposed she should have guessed. He sighed slightly and she realized he was relaxing on the table under the heat lamp, which she didn’t see any reason to discourage.

“Well, the vet said she couldn’t be fixed until she was _out_ of heat, so we’ll just have to put up with it for a few days,” Rachel went on casually. “ _Women_ , huh?”

“That’s a joke,” Jeremy identified. He had his eyes closed now. “Threat assessment says it’s too risky for _me_ to make that joke.”

Rachel stared hard at him for a long moment, but he never cracked a smile. She supposed he could have meant it seriously; if _anyone_ could, it was Jeremy.

“Earth to Jeremy, come in,” she said a few minutes later, and his eyes fluttered open. She didn’t think he’d really been asleep, more like meditating; and she hated to disturb it, but he really couldn’t stay on her exam table all day. “Sit up. I think you’ll survive,” she judged. She grimaced on his behalf. “One more thing I have to do, though.”

“Blows to the head necessitate retinal checks,” Jeremy agreed reluctantly.

She tried to get it over with quickly. “Where do you exercise?”

“My room, and the gym.”

“Do you have access to a hot tub?” she questioned. He indicated yes. “Do you like using it?”

“I’ve never tried it,” he admitted. He sounded mildly intrigued, however.

“Well, try it,” Rachel suggested. “But listen: no more than twenty minutes at a time, followed by at least twenty minutes in a cooler pool,” she instructed sternly, and he nodded. “And no more than an hour total in a day. Monitor your temperature. Maybe I could also have a heat lamp sent to your room,” she added. “No more than twenty minutes every two hours, it has a timer on it.” She interpreted his muted expression as pleasantly anticipatory. “You go to Dr. Zhu next?”

“Yes.” He did not seem eager.

“Well, stay calm,” she advised, a bit ridiculously. “I don’t want to see you in here tomorrow morning looking worse. And go down to X-ray later.”

“Up,” he corrected her. “Yes, Dr. Ward.”

**

When Rachel walked into the exam room the next morning, she saw the one thing she hadn’t expected: No Jeremy. She even checked under the exam table and glanced up at the ceiling to be sure. Then she stuck her head back out to the reception area. “Jenny, has Jeremy Green come by?” she asked the nurse, who shook her head.

Rachel went on through to her office and checked her calendar and email to see if there had been any last-minute changes, but no, as far as she could tell he was supposed to be here. With a shrug she picked up her cell phone and called him.

“ _Green_ ,” he answered abruptly.

“Ward,” she replied in kind. “Why aren’t you in my exam room right now?” There _could_ be a perfectly good explanation for it, so she didn’t want to be accusatory.

“ _You said you didn’t want to see me today_ ,” he claimed, “ _if I looked worse_.”

Rachel frowned. “Did you get into another fight?” Though it sounded like he really hadn’t done much _fighting_ the other day.

“ _No_.”

Rachel tried to think with Jeremy logic. “The bruises are at that point where they look really awful, even though they’re healing,” she surmised.

“ _Yes_ ,” Jeremy agreed readily.

“You are charmingly literal, aren’t you?” Rachel told him, her tone suggesting it wasn’t very charming at all.

“ _You said—oh, that’s not what you meant_ ,” he finally realized. She could just picture the expression on his face, befuddlement changing to some semblance of understanding. Not _true_ understanding, she suspected, but merely the application of what he probably called ‘Rachel logic.’

“That’s right, tough guy,” she agreed. “Now are you coming in here, or are you busy?”

“ _ETA three-point-seven minutes_ ,” he told her. Then he hung up.

Rachel didn’t look at the clock but assumed his timing was accurate when she heard a knock on the door. “Come in.”

The door opened and Jeremy walked in, indeed looking worse with his face a mass of purple and yellow bruises. “Hold it,” Rachel instructed, narrowing her eyes, and he froze. “Challenge: cupcake.” For a moment she enjoyed his look of uncertainty, then she realized she probably shouldn’t be messing with him over key concepts like security and identity. “I’m kidding,” she explained. “Sorry, come in.”

“No need to further verify _your_ identity,” Jeremy replied as he shut the door, with the tiniest touch of pique.

Rachel smirked. “You know the drill, sailor,” she directed him, nodding at the exam table. “You _do_ look awful, by the way. But I checked the X-rays from yesterday, it looks like your arm has completely healed.” She probed it gently. “Any pain?”

“One,” he replied, which confused her until she realized he was giving a number on the pain scale.

“Good. Let’s check the rest.”

“Your injury hasn’t healed,” Jeremy pointed out a minute later, indicating the cat scratch.

Rachel hadn’t thought about it much. “Well, some of us aren’t as advanced in that regard,” she reminded him.

“Do you need assistance neutralizing the threat?” he inquired.

She tried not to think of it as an offer to kill her sister’s cat, but rather a nice gesture according to Jeremy logic. “No, we’ll be fine, we’re going to have her fixed in a few days,” Rachel assured him. “Thanks, though.” She went around to his other side, inspecting his injuries. “Where were you when I called?” she wanted to know, changing the subject. “Not exercising, I hope.”

“I was at the library, doing mission research,” he revealed.

“You have a new mission already?” Rachel asked in some surprise.

He hesitated. “I can’t tell you about it.”

“No, I understand,” she agreed. “It just seems awfully fast. When do you leave?”

“When you give me medical clearance.” Now Rachel sat back and looked up at him, her turn to wear the perplexed expression. There’d been no mention of a pending mission, no pressure from her directors to clear him for active duty. Which wasn’t a _bad_ thing; she just hadn’t expected that level of consideration, frankly.

“Well don’t start packing your bags yet,” she warned. “The bones in your arm may have healed as far as we can see on an X-ray, but it’s still going to be fragile for a while.” Though it was difficult to think of anything on Jeremy as fragile at this point. “You can start exercising with it again, but start slow, and stop if it hurts.” He nodded dutifully. “Did you get that heat lamp I sent up?”

“My room is on a _lower_ level,” he corrected.

“You’re kind of obsessed with directions,” she teased. “Have you _used_ the heat lamp? Do you _like_ it?”

“Yes.” It was a simple answer, but considering the simplicity of his life at the Center, adding any new element that he enjoyed seemed like a victory.

“Are you going to check my eyes?” he wanted to know as she stood up.

“Do you want me to?” she queried, anticipating the answer.

“No.”

“How do they feel?” Rachel asked, trying to sound clinical. “Like they’re going to pop out of your head?”

“No,” Jeremy responded, after blinking a moment as though checking.

“Well, I guess I won’t,” Rachel conceded.

He stood and pulled his shirt back on. “May I leave?”

“I know, you’re eager to see Dr. Zhu.” Rachel nodded as sincerely as she could, then chuckled at his expression of subtle distaste. “Alright, you can go. Come back tomorrow—“

“Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel,” Jeremy deadpanned. “A reference to the comedy series _Batman_ , 1966-68.”

“Glad to see you’re not just reading trashy romance novels at the library,” Rachel quipped.

He blinked for a moment, then decided this one was beyond him. “Good-bye, Dr. Ward.”


End file.
